Habitation Velier Longpond “TECA” 2005 14 Year Old Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Jun 112020
 

 

 

There are few people who tried the quartet of the Velier black-bottled Long Pond series that was released (or should that read “unleashed”?) in 2018, who didn’t have an opinion on the snarling beastie that was the 2003 NRJ TECA. That was a rank, reeking, sneering, foul-smelling animal of a rum, unwashed, uncouth, unafraid, and it blasted its way through each and every unwary palate on the planet.  If Luca Gargano, the boss of Velier, wanted to provide a rum that would show what a high ester beefcake could do, and to educate us as to why it was never meant to be had on its own, he succeeded brilliantly with that one.

And yet a year later, he produced another pure single rum, also from the double retort pot still at Long Pond, also a TECA, a year younger and a percentage point weaker, with fourscore or so more gr/hlpa esters – and it blew the 2018 version out of the water.  It was an amazing piece of work, better in almost every way (except perhaps for rumstink), and if one did not know better, just about a completely different rum altogether. Which makes it rather strange that it has not received more plaudits, or been mentioned more often (see “other notes”, below).

Let’s see if we can’t redress that somewhat. This is a Jamaican rum from Longpond, double pot still made, 62% ABV, 14 years old, and released as one of the pot still rums the Habitation Velier line is there to showcase.  I will take it as a given it’s been completely tropically aged.  Note of course, the ester figure of 1289.5 gr/hlpa, which is very close to the maximum (1600) allowed by Jamaican law.  What we could expect from such a high number, then, is a rum sporting taste-chops of uncommon intensity and flavour, as rounded off by nearly a decade and a half of ageing – now, those statistics made the TECA 2018 detonate in your face and it’s arguable whether that’s a success, but here? … it worked. Swimmingly.

Nose first. Some of the lurking bog-monsters of the acetones, rubber and sulphur that defined the earlier version remained, but much more restrained – rubber, wax, brine, funk, plasticine, rotting fruits, pineapple, that kind of thing. What made it different was a sort of enhanced balance, a sweetness and thickness to the experience, which I really enjoyed. Much of the “wtf?” quality of its brother – the gaminess, the meatiness, the reek – was toned down or had disappeared, replaced by a much tastier series of fleshy, overripe fruit, pineapple and crushed almonds.

What distinguished the rum so much on the palate, I think, was the way that the very things I had shuddered at with the NRJ TECA were, when dialled down and better integrated, exactly what made this one so very good.  The spoiling meat and hogo danced around the background, but never overwhelmed the solid notes of mint, thyme, rubber, nail polish, acetones and bags of molasses and caramel and ripe fruits.  I particularly liked the way that the combination of ripe peaches and apricots versus the tart citrus-and-strawberry line stopped the whole “descent into madness” thing.  This allowed the rum to be extreme, yes, but not overpoweringly so…sweeter and thicker and sharper and better than one would be led to expect with that ester count, like they had all agreed to a non-aggression pact. The finish – which seemed to want to hang around for a while to show off – was redolent of molasses, mint, fruits, ripe peaches, pineapples, lemon peel and a weird little whiff of green peas, and I enjoyed it quite a bit as well.

So – good or bad? Let’s see if we can sum this up. In short, I believe the 2005 TECA was a furious and outstanding rum on nearly every level. But that comes with caveats. “Fasten your seatbelt” remarked Serge Valentin in his 85 point review, and Christoph Harrer on the German Rum Club page wrote shakily (perhaps in awe) that “the smell is […] brutal and hit me like a bomb,” — which leads one to wonder what he might have made of the original TECA, but he had a point: you can’t treat it like a Zacapa or a Diplo…therein lies madness and trauma for sure. Even if you like your Jamaicans and boast of your experiences with fullproof Hampdens and Worthy Park rums, this was one to be approached — at that strength and with that ester count — with some caution. 

Perhaps it would take a few more nips and sips to appreciate it more fully.  I tried it at the German rumfest in 2019, and while I knew right away that it was special and a true original, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it…and so filched a second sample to try more carefully, at leisure.  Normally I walk around a rumfest with four glasses in my hand, but that day I kept one glass with this juice on the go for the entire afternoon, and returned the very next day to get another two. And the conclusion I came to, then and now, is that while at the beginning it has all the grace of a runaway D9, at the end, when the dust settles, all the disparate notes come together in a rhythm that somehow manages to elevate its initial brutality to a surprising, and very welcome, elegance. 

(#735)(87/100)

Other Notes

Others have varying opinions on this rum, mostly on the plus side. Marius over at Single Cask Rum did the full comparison of the two TECA rums and came to similar conclusions as I did, scoring it 86 points. Le Blog a Roger was less positive and felt it was still too extreme for him and gave it 82.  And our old Haiku-style-reviewer, Serge Valentin noted it as being “not easy” and “perhaps a tad too much” but liked it to the tune of 85 points.

Albrecht Rum LPS Long Pond 1993 17 Year Old Jamaican Rum – Review

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Feb 282019
 

Until Velier came along last year and produced that incredible Long Pond Quartet, you would have been hard pressed to get much from that distillery, which sent most of its stock overseas to age and be issued by others.  Much of their production was placed into blends, and occasionally a small single cask release would be spotted on the market – the Juuls Ping 9, BBR 1977, Compagnie’s 2003 12 YO, Rum Nation’s 1986 Supreme Lord VI, the snarling 81.3% bronto of SMWS R5.1, and, of course, greatest of them all, the near legendary G&M 1941 58 year old.

Now, we hear a lot about E&A Scheer these days, but that doesn’t mean other bulk importers don’t exist in Europe.  One of these is Rum Albrecht GmbH, a north-German subsidiary of the family owned Heinz Eggert & Co, which is an importer and exporter of distillates, spirits, aromatics essences, alcoholic raw materials, wines and liqueurs for over sixty years. Since working with aromatics and rums leads directly towards high ester rums, perhaps it’s no surprise that as of 2004 they began releasing limited editions of the “LPS” series of rums from Long Pond, and have thus far produced several: an 11 YO, a 13 YO, a 17 YO and an 18 YO , all from the distillation year of 1993.

Unfortunately, that and the strength (53% across the range) is about all the information easily available — the label is a masterpiece of nothing-in-particular, really. Flo of Barrel Aged Thoughts noted in his 2013 review that the rum was imported from and fully aged in Jamaica and simply bottled in Germany, with a release of 342 bottles, and he also remarked on it being a pot still distillate, (said info provided by RA themselves, since the label mentions nothing of the kind).  So okay, we have that.

But none of that really mattered, because when tried in concert with several other Jamaicans, this thing shone even without knowing precisely what it was (at the time).  It was so different from the Ping 9 as to be a different rum altogether, and seemed to share DNA more with the 1941, or even a Hampden than anything else. Its nose began with rubbery, waxy and lots of clear fruity-estery notes and then proceeded into aromas of cream cheese and chives, cereals, honey, lemon peel and cumin.  And as if it got bored with that, after an hour or so it coughed up a few extras for the patient, of cardamom, overripe bananas and sour cream, all very crisp, very aromatic, a veritable smorgasbord of Jamaica.

The taste was similarly complex: while initially a bit sharp, it calmed down rapidly and glided smoothly across the palate, and the first notes I made were about rough black bread and cream cheese, brine and olives and many of the bits and pieces carrying forward from the nose. Vanilla, caramel, toffee, plus cumin, freshly sawn cedar planks, nougat, almonds and a hint of smoke and leather, with an excellent, long-lasting finish that summed up everything that came before – mostly brine, rubber, cedar, nuts and sharper fruits (apples, green grapes and firm yellow mangoes). I know Jamaicans from the old and famed distilleries can have bags of flavour, but honestly, the assembly of this rum was nothing less than outstanding.  

What’s even more surprising about the rum, is how under-the-radar it was when it was released in 2013 (and continues to be, now – I mean, have you ever heard of it?).  Granted, back then the Jamaican rum renaissance was just beginning to get a head of steam, the Velier Hampdens and the Long Pond Quartet were just glints in the milkman’s eye, and all was somewhat overshadowed by the burgeoning reputation of Foursquare.  But a rum like this, from the 1990s, 17 years tropical ageing (another thing that hadn’t quite taken off back then), from Long Pond? It should have been lauded from every hilltop and rumfest in sight and disappeared off the shelves faster than you could say “Was zum Teufel?” in Jamaican.

My own feeling is that Albrecht didn’t really understand what they were sitting on and released it to the German market without much fanfare, and the story goes that some 10-15 far-sighted cocktail-loving people bought like 80% of the entire outturn to juice up their bars, and then it just sank out of sight in spite of the German reviewers’ praises.  Well, there probably isn’t much of it remaining after all these years, and I’ve never seen one go up for sale on the auction sites of FB sales pages. But I know that if it ever does, I’m buying one, and I sure hope Albrecht has squirrelled away a few more like it for future release to the Faithful.

(#603)(88/100)

Velier NRJ “Long Pond TECA” 2003 15 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Nov 072018
 

“Pungent f*cker, isn’t it?” smirked Gregers, responding to my own incredulous text to him, when I recovered my glottis from the floor where the TECA had deposited and then stomped it flat. Another comment I got was from P-O Côté after the Vale Royal review came out: “Can’t wait to read your thoughts about the TECA…!! … Hard to describe without sounding gross.” And Rumboom remarked on a taste of “sweat” and “organic waste” in their own rundown of the TECA, with another post elsewhere actually using the word “manure.”

I start with these varied comments to emphasize that I am not alone in believing that the TECA is a rum you hold in your trembling hands when surveying the reeking battlefield of the zombie apocalypse.  I’m a fairly fit old fart of some mental fortitude, I’ve tasted rums from up and down the quality ladder…but the TECA still left me shell-shocked and shaking, and somewhere I could hear Luca sniggering happily and doing a fist pump. Partly or completely, this was because of the huge ester level the rum displayed -1200 gr/hlpaa (remember, 1600 is the maximum legal limit after which we enter “easily-weaponizable” territory), which the makers, staying within the traditional ester band names, refer to as “Continental Flavoured” but which I just call shattering.

In sampling the initial nose of the third rum in the NRJ series, I am not kidding you when I say that I almost fell out of my chair in disbelief. The aroma was the single most rancid, hogo-laden ester bomb I’d ever experienced – I’ve tasted hundreds of rums in my time, but never anything remotely like this (except perhaps the Japanese Seven Seas rum, and I’d thought that one was a contaminated sample; now, I’m not so sure). All of the hinted-at off-the-wall aromas of the Cambridge were present here, except they were gleefully torqued up – a lot. It smelled like the aforementioned tannery gone amok or the hair salon dumping every chemical on the floor (at once) – it was a massive blurt of sulphur, methane, rubber and plastic dissolving in a bubbling pool of ammonia.  It smelled like hemp rope and decomposing wet jute bags, joined by something really rancid – rotting meat, microwaved fish, and three-day-old roadkill marinating on a hot day next to the asphalt machine. There was the scent of a strong soy-flavoured vegetable soup and spoiling chicken tikka, raw onions and sweat. The clear, fruity ester background was so intense it made the eyes water and the nose pucker, cold and clear and precise, giving rather less enjoyment than a furious bitch slap of sharp pineapples, gooseberries, ginnips, unripe mangoes, salmiak, green apples.  I know this sounds like a lot, but the rum’s nose went so far into uncharted territory that I really spent a long time on it, and this is what was there. And at the end, I really couldn’t say I enjoyed it – it was just too much, of everything. Hogo is what this kind of rotten meat flavour is called – or rancio or dunder or whatever — but for my money, it stands for “Ho God!!”

So that’s bad, right? Reading this, you’d think so.  But courage, Sir Knight, hoist up thy codpiece and taste it.  The very first expression in that section of my notes is a disbelieving “WTF?” … because it simply dumbfounded me – where did all the crazy-ass crap go?  It tasted of soda pop – coke, or fanta – persimmons and passion fruits and red currants, sharp and tasty. Salt, brine, bags of olives, plastic, rubber, vanilla, licorice all rubbed shoulders in a melange made pleasant just by comparing it to the trauma of what went before. The rancio and spoiling meat hogo retreated so fast it’s like they just vapourized themselves.  The flavours were powerful and intense, yes – at 62.5% ABV they could hardly be anything else – and you got much of the same fruitiness that lurked behind the funk of the smells, mangoes, tart gooseberries, red currants, unsweetened yoghurt and sour cream. But the real take away was that the nose and palate diverged so much. Aside from the sharp fruits and receding vegetable soup, there was also pistachio nuts, a sort of woodsy cologne, and even some over-sugared soda pop.  And when I hit the finish line, it exhaled with a long sigh redolent of more pistachios, vanilla, anise, soy, olives and a veritable orchard of rotting fruits and banana skins.

The Long Pond TECA rum from National Rums of Jamaica is a grinning ode to excess of every kind.  Given the profile I describe above (especially how it smelled) I think it took real courage for Luca to release it, and it once again demonstrates that he’s willing to forego initial sales to show us something we have not seen before, point us in a direction at odds with prevailing trends. It’s certainly unique – Luca remarked to me that it was probably the first time anyone had ever released such a high-ester well-aged Long Pond, and I agree. So far we’ve seen that the low-level-ester Vale Royal was a lovely, near-traditional Jamaican rum that edged gently away from more familiar island profiles, and the mid-level-ester Cambridge dared to step over the line and become something remarkably different, with strong tastes that almost redefined Jamaican and provided a taste profile that was breathtaking – if not entirely something I cared for.  But the TECA didn’t edge towards the line, it didn’t step over it – it was a rum that blasted way beyond and became something that knocked me straight into next week. This was and will remain one of the most original, pungently unbelievable, divisive rums I’ve tried in my entire writing career, because, quite frankly, I believe it’s a rum which few outside the deep-dive rum-junkies of the Jamaican style will ever like. And love? Well, who knows. It may yet grow on me. 

(#565)(79/100)

Background notes

(With the exception of the estate section, all remarks here are the same for the four reviews)

This series of essays on the four NRJ rums contains:

In brief, these are all rums from Long Pond distillery, and represent distillates with varying levels of esters (I have elected to go in the direction of lowest ester count → highest, in these reviews). Much of the background has been covered already by two people: the Cocktail Wonk himself with his Jamaican estate profiles and related writings, and the first guy through the gate on the four rums, Flo Redbeard of Barrel Aged Thoughts, who has written extensively on them all (in German) in October 2018. As a bonus, note that a bunch of guys sampled and briefly reviewed all four on Rumboom (again, in German) the same week as my own reviews came out, for those who want some comparisons.

The various Jamaican ester marks

These are definitions of ester counts, and while most rums issued in the last ten years make no mention of such statistics, it seems to be a coming thing based on its increasing visibility in marketing and labelling: right now most of this comes from Jamaica, but Reunion’s Savanna also has started mentioning it in its Grand Arôme line of rums.  For those who are coming into this subject cold, esters are the chemical compounds responsible for much of a given rum’s flowery and fruity flavours – they are measured in grams per hectoliter of pure alcohol, a hectoliter being 100 liters; a light Cuban style rum can have as little as 20 g/hlpa while an ester gorilla like the DOK can go right up to the legal max of 1600 at which point it’s no longer much of a drinker’s rum, but a flavouring agent for lesser rums. (For good background reading, check out the Wonk’s work on Jamaican funk, here).

Back in the day, the British classified Jamaican rums into four major styles, and many estates took this a few steps further by subdividing the major categories even more:

Standard Classification

  •  Common Clean 50-150 gr/hlpa
  •  Plummer 150-200 gr/hlpa
  •  Wedderburn 200-300 gr/hlpa
  •  Continental Flavoured 700-1600 gr/hlpa

Exactly who came up with the naming nomenclature, or what those names mean, is something of a historian’s dilemma, and what they call the juice between 301 to 699 gr/hlpa is not noted, but if anyone knows more, drop me a line and I’ll add the info.  Note in particular that these counts reflect the esters after distillation but before ageing, so a chemical test might find a differing value if checked after many years’ rest in a barrel.

Long Pond itself sliced and diced and came up with their own ester subdivisions, and the inference seems to be that the initials probably refer to distilleries and estates acquired over the decades, if not centuries.  It would also appear that the ester counts on the four bottles do indeed reflect Long Pond’s system, not the standard notation (tables.

RV                        0-20
CQV                    20-50
LRM                    50-90
ITP /LSO            90-120
HJC / LIB         120-150
IRW / VRW    150-250
HHH / OCLP    250-400
LPS                  400-550
STC❤E             550-700
TECA            1200-1300
TECB            1300-1400
TECC            1500-1600

The Estate Name:

It’s unclear whether the TECA stands for Tilston Estate, one of the estates that got subsumed into Long Pond in the wave of consolidations in the 1940s and 1950s (this is the theory to which Luca subscribes), or for Trelawny Estates, the umbrella company created in the 1950s before being taken over by the Government and renamed National Rums of Jamaica.  This is where some additional research is needed – nobody has written (so far) on the meaning of the “CA”, though given the Long Pond marks listed above, it’s reasonable to suppose it’s Tilston/Trelawny Estate, Continental Type A (as opposed to “B” or “C” with progressively higher ester levels. The various histories of Long Pond written by Barrel Aged Thoughts, the Cocktail Wonk and DuRhum provide useful background reading, though they do not settle the mark designation issue conclusively one way or the other.

Note: National Rums of Jamaica is not an estate or a distillery in and of itself, but is an umbrella company owned by three organizations: the Jamaican Government, Maison Ferrand of France (who got their stake in 2017 when they bought WIRD in Barbados, the original holder of the share Ferrand now hold) and Guyana’s DDL.

Velier NRJ “Cambridge STC❤E” 2005 13 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 052018
 

For those who are deep into rumlore, trying the quartet of the National Rums of Jamaica series issued by Velier in 2018 is an exercise I would recommend doing with all four at once, because each informs the other and each has an ester count that must be taken into consideration when figuring out what one wants out of them, and what one gets – and those are not always the same things.  If on the other hand you’re new to the field, prefer rums as quiescent as a feather pillow, something that could give the silkiness of a baby’s cheek a raging inferiority complex, and are merely buying the Cambridge 2005 13YO because it is made by Velier and you wanted to jump on the train and see what the fuss is about (or because of a misguided FOMO), my suggestion is to stay on the platform and look into the carriage carefully before buying a ticket.

This might sound like paradoxical advice coming from an avowed rum geek, but just follow me through the tasting of this 62.5% bronto, which sported a charmingly erect codpiece of 550 grams of esters (out of a max of 700 grams per hectoliter of alcohol (hlpa) — this moves it way out from the “Common Clean,” “Plummer” and “Wedderburn” categories, and somewhere in between the “Wedderburn” and “Continental Flavoured” (see other notes below), although it is formally listed as being a CF.  For comparison, the most furiously esterified rum ever made, the DOK (which is not supposed to be a drinking rum, by the way, but a flavouring ingredient for lesser rums and the Caputo 1973) runs at just about the legal limit of 1600 /hlpa, and most rums with a count worth mentioning pretty much stick in the few hundreds range.

There’s a reason for that. What these esters do is provide a varied and intense and enormously boosted flavour profile, not all of which can be considered palatable at all times, though the fruitiness and light flowers are common to all of them and account for much of the popularity of such rums which masochistically reach for higher numbers, perhaps just to say “I got more than you, buddy”. Maybe, but some caution should be exercised too, because high levels of esters do not in and of themselves make for really good rums every single time.  Still, with Luca having his nose in the series, one can’t help but hope for something amazingly new and perhaps even spectacular. I sure wanted that myself.

And got it, right from the initial nosing of this kinetic rum, which seemed to be straining at the leash the entire time I tried it, ready to blast me in the face with one of the most unique profiles I’ve ever tried.  Christ!…It started off with tons of dry jute sacks, dusty cardboard and hay – and then went off on a tangent so extreme that I swear it could make a triangle feel it had more than a hundred and eighty degrees. It opened a huge can of sensory whup-ass with the full undiluted rumstink of an unventilated tannery going full tilt (yes, I’ve been in one), the sort of stark pungency one finds in a hairdressing salon using way too much nail polish remover, and a serious excess of ammonia and hair relaxant…all at the same time. I mean, wow! It’s got originality, I’ll give it that (and the points to go with it) but here is one place where the funk is really a bit much.  And yet, and yet….alongside these amazingly powerful fragrances came crisp, clearly-defined fruits,mostly of the sharper variety – pineapple, gooseberries, five-finger, soursop, unripe mangoes, green grapes, red currants, olives, brine, pimentos…I could go on.

What makes the rum so astounding – and it is, you know, for all its off-the-wall wild madness – is the way it keeps developing.  In many rums what you get to smell is pretty much, with some minor variation, what you get to taste. Not here. Not even close. Oh the palate is forceful, it’s sharp, it’s as chiselled as a bodybuilder’s abs, and initially it began like the nose did, with glue, ammonia and sweet-clear acetone-perfume bolted on to a hot and full bodied rum.  But over time it became softer, slightly creamy, a bit yeasty, minty, and also oddly light, even sweet. Then came the parade of vanilla, peaches, ginger, cardamom, olives, brine, pimentos, salty caramel ice cream, freshly baked sourdough bread and a very sharp cheddar, and still it wasn’t done – it closed off in a long, dry finish laden with attar of roses, a cornucopia of sharp and unripe fleshy fruits (apricots, peaches, apples), rotting bananas, acetones, nail polish and lots and lots of flowers.

I honestly don’t know what to make of a rum this different.  It provides everything I’ve ever wanted as an answer to tame rum makers who regularly regurgitate unadventurous rums that differ only in minute ways from previous iterations and famed older blends.  This one in contrast is startlingly original, seemingly cut from new cloth — it’s massive, it’s feral, it makes no apologies for what it is and sports a simply ginormous range of flavours. It cannot be ignored just because it’s teetering on the wrong side of batsh*t crazy (which I contend it does).  Luca Gargano, if you strain your credulity to the limit, can conceivably make a boring rum…but he’s too skilled to make a bad one, and I think what he was gunning for here was a brown bomber that showcased the island, the distillery, the marque and the ester-laden profile.  He certainly succeeded at all of these things…though whether the rum is an unqualified success for the lay-drinker is a much harder question to answer.

You see, there’s a reason such high ester superrums don’t get made very often.  They simply overload the tasting circuits, and sometimes such a plethora of intense good things is simply too much.  I’m not saying that’s the case here because the balance and overall profile is quite good – just that the rum, for all its brilliantly choreographed taste gyrations, is not entirely to my taste, the ammonia-laden nose is overboard, and I think it’s likely to be a polarizing product – good for Jamaica-lovers, great for the geeks, not so much for Joe Harilall down the road. I asked for new and spectacular and I got both.  But a wonderful, amazing, must-have rum? The next Skeldon or 1970s PM, or 1980s Caroni? Not entirely.

(#564)(84/100)

Background notes

(With the exception of the estate section, all remarks here are the same for the four reviews)

This series of essays on the four NRJ rums contains:

In brief, these are all rums from Long Pond distillery, and represent distillates with varying levels of esters (I have elected to go in the direction of lowest ester count → highest, in these reviews). Much of the background has been covered already by two people: the Cocktail Wonk himself with his Jamaican estate profiles and related writings, and the first guy through the gate on the four rums, Flo Redbeard of Barrel Aged Thoughts, who has written extensively on them all (in German) in October 2018. As a bonus, note that a bunch of guys sampled and briefly reviewed all four on Rumboom (again, in German) the same week as my own reviews came out, for those who want some comparisons.

The various Jamaican ester marks

These are definitions of ester counts, and while most rums issued in the last ten years make no mention of such statistics, it seems to be a coming thing based on its increasing visibility in marketing and labelling: right now most of this comes from Jamaica, but Reunion’s Savanna also has started mentioning it in its Grand Arôme line of rums.  For those who are coming into this subject cold, esters are the chemical compounds responsible for much of a given rum’s flowery and fruity flavours – they are measured in grams per hectoliter of pure alcohol, a hectoliter being 100 liters; a light Cuban style rum can have as little as 20 g/hlpa while an ester gorilla like the DOK can go right up to the legal max of 1600 at which point it’s no longer much of a drinker’s rum, but a flavouring agent for lesser rums. (For good background reading, check out the Wonk’s work on Jamaican funk, here).

Back in the day, the British classified Jamaican rums into four major styles, and many estates took this a few steps further by subdividing the major categories even more:

Standard Classification

  •  Common Clean 50-150 gr/hlpa
  •  Plummer 150-200 gr/hlpa
  •  Wedderburn 200-300 gr/hlpa
  •  Continental Flavoured 700-1600 gr/hlpa

Exactly who came up with the naming nomenclature, or what those names mean, is something of a historian’s dilemma, and what they call the juice between 301 to 699 gr/hlpa is not noted, but if anyone knows more, drop me a line and I’ll add the info.  Note in particular that these counts reflect the esters after distillation but before ageing, so a chemical test might find a differing value if checked after many years’ rest in a barrel.

Long Pond itself sliced and diced and came up with their own ester subdivisions, and the inference seems to be that the initials probably refer to distilleries and estates acquired over the decades, if not centuries.  It would also appear that the ester counts on the four bottles do indeed reflect Long Pond’s system, not the standard notation (tables.

RV                        0-20
CQV                    20-50
LRM                    50-90
ITP /LSO            90-120
HJC / LIB         120-150
IRW / VRW    150-250
HHH / OCLP    250-400
LPS                  400-550
STC❤E             550-700
TECA            1200-1300
TECB            1300-1400
TECC            1500-1600

The Estate Name:

Like the Vale Royal estate and Long Pond itself, Cambridge was also located in Trelawny Parish and has a history covered in greater depth by BAT, here, so I’ll just provide the highlights in the interests of keeping things manageable. Founded in the late 18th century by a family named Barrett (there’s a record of still being in the hand of an Edward Barrett a generation later), it closed its doors just after the Second World War in 1947 by which time another family (or the name-changed original one) called Thompson owned the place. It’s unclear whether the mark STCE (Simon Thompson Cambridge Estate according to the estimable Luca Gargano) was maintained and used because physical stills had been brought over to Long Pond at that time, or whether the Cambridge style was being copied with existing stills.

Whatever the case back then, these days the stills are definitely at Long Pond and the Cambridge came off the a John Dore double retort pot still in 2005.  The label reflects a level of 550 g/hlpa esters which is being stated as a Continental Flavoured style, but as I’ve remarked before, the level falls in the gap between Wedderburn and CF.  I imagine they went with their own system here.

Note: National Rums of Jamaica is not an estate or a distillery in and of itself, but is an umbrella company owned by three organizations: the Jamaican Government, Maison Ferrand of France (who got their stake in 2017 when they bought WIRD in Barbados, the original holder of the share Ferrand now hold) and Guyana’s DDL.

Velier NRJ “Vale Royale VRW” 2006 12 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Nov 042018
 

This whole week I’ll be looking at the quartet of stern, forbidding black and white bottles of the National Rums of Jamaica, which have excited a slowly rising conversation on social media as pictures get posted and more and more people try them.  Certainly, they’ve got all the Jamaican rum punditry in transports already (plus they are issued by Velier, which is clear from the minimalist label and box design). All four will be written about in a sequence, because there’s simply no way to speak to them individually at long intervals without missing the point, which is that they’re part of an integrated set, and to understand one means to try and understand all – each informs the other. Because there’s a fair bit of background involved in these rums, below each post will have a longer-than usual “Background notes” section detailing notes common to all, and defining some terms, below the review.

The Vale Royal is probably the most traditional rum of the NRJ series, and for the reasonably wide-tasting rum drinker, the best one to start with, as will become clear when we move through the four-rum series.  It also has the lowest ester-count among the set, which might give you an inkling of how they all progress (you’d think that….but no). Bottled at 62.5%, as they all are, it derives from a double retort pot still, is 12 years old, tropically aged (of course) and is made in the Wedderburn style, with an ester count of 150 grams per hectoliter of pure alcohol (g/hlpa) — out of a max of 250 for this classification — which is not the standard accepted one for Jamaicans as a whole, but Longpond’s own.  That makes it a very approachable rum, very tasty, yet paradoxically not entirely a rum I could immediately assign to Jamaica, the way one could, for example, a Worthy Park, an Appleton, or a Hampden — though admittedly we have more experience with those and therefore know them somewhat better (this is a personal opinion, though).

Consider first the nose.  Frankly, I thought it was lovely – not just because it was different (it certainly was), but because it combined the familiar and the strange in intriguing new ways. It started off dusty, musky, loamy, earthy…the sort of damp potting soil in which my wife exercises her green thumb.  There was also a bit of vaguely herbal funk going on in the background, dry, like a hemp rope, or an old jute sack that once held rice paddy. But all this was background because on top of all that was the fruitiness, the flowery notes which gave the rum its character – cherries, peaches, pineapples, mixed with salt caramel, vanilla, almonds, hazelnuts and flambeed bananas. I mean, that was a really nice series of aromas.

On the palate the strength showed its fangs and let’s face it, at 62.5% it’s got monster power hidden under the hood, and a little patience was required.  It was sharp, sweet, flowery and estery to a fault, and somehow that dry earthy note disappeared almost entirely, probably edged out by the sheer force of all the other flavours that took over – this is perhaps one of those rums where a little water is really required.  I didn’t get much without the addition, but with a few drops there was a cloudburst of flowery flavours and sharp fruits: pears, apples, cider, green grapes, raisins, unripe mangoes, tart yoghurt and sour cream, nuts, vanilla, anise and even some yeasty bread just to shake things up.  And the finish, well, that was excellent – long, flavourful, fruity, sweetly flower-like, and took forever to die down, coughing up a last note of bitter chocolate, crushed hazelnuts, vanilla and sharp unripe fruits just to show that even on the back end it meant business and had a bit ore to smack you down with..

For my money, this is a pretty great rum. It is well aged, well balanced, and has the funky note and that fruity estery profile – neither to excess – that drives lovers of Worthy Park and Hampden into orgasmic throes of onanistic ecstasy.  It also has originality and character in that it isn’t afraid to add a few extra things into the mix that might seem startling at first – these are new and original and yet not overdone. In fine, it has almost everything I want from a rum that purports to break the mould and show us something different – old tastes combined with new and intriguing flavours that somehow don’t call that much attention to themselves, all put together into something peculiarly its own.  What it presented was an interesting melange of both Jamaican and something else, with a sly wink and an arrow pointing at the other, more ester-boosted rums in the series…for both good and ill. And that will become clearer as we progress through the line.

(#563)(87/100)

Background notes

(With the exception of the estate section, all remarks here are the same for the four reviews)

This series of essays on the four NRJ rums contains:

In brief, these are all rums from Long Pond distillery, and represent distillates with varying levels of esters (I have elected to go in the direction of lowest ester count → highest, in these reviews). Much of the background has been covered already by two people: the Cocktail Wonk himself with his Jamaican estate profiles and related writings, and the first guy through the gate on the four rums, Flo Redbeard of Barrel Aged Thoughts, who has written extensively on them all (in German) in October 2018. As a bonus, note that a bunch of guys sampled and briefly reviewed all four on Rumboom (again, in German) the same week as my own reviews came out, for those who want some comparisons.

The various Jamaican ester marks

These are definitions of ester counts, and while most rums issued in the last ten years make no mention of such statistics, it seems to be a coming thing based on its increasing visibility in marketing and labelling: right now most of this comes from Jamaica, but Reunion’s Savanna also has started mentioning it in its Grand Arôme line of rums.  For those who are coming into this subject cold, esters are the chemical compounds responsible for much of a given rum’s flowery and fruity flavours – they are measured in grams per hectoliter of pure alcohol, a hectoliter being 100 liters; a light Cuban style rum can have as little as 20 g/hlpa while an ester gorilla like the DOK can go right up to the legal max of 1600 at which point it’s no longer much of a drinker’s rum, but a flavouring agent for lesser rums. (For good background reading, check out the Wonk’s work on Jamaican funk, here).

Back in the day, the British classified Jamaican rums into four major styles, and many estates took this a few steps further by subdividing the major categories even more:

Standard Classification

  •  Common Clean 50-150 gr/hlpa
  •  Plummer 150-200 gr/hlpa
  •  Wedderburn 200-300 gr/hlpa
  •  Continental Flavoured 700-1600 gr/hlpa

Exactly who came up with the naming nomenclature, or what those names mean, is something of a historian’s dilemma, and what they call the juice between 301 to 699 gr/hlpa is not noted, but if anyone knows more, drop me a line and I’ll add the info.  Note in particular that these counts reflect the esters after distillation but before ageing, so a chemical test might find a differing value if checked after many years’ rest in a barrel

Long Pond itself sliced and diced and came up with their own ester subdivisions, and the inference seems to be that the initials probably refer to distilleries and estates acquired over the decades, if not centuries.  It would also appear that the ester counts on the four bottles do indeed reflect Long Pond’s system, not the standard notation (tables.

RV                        0-20
CQV                    20-50
LRM                    50-90
ITP /LSO            90-120
HJC / LIB         120-150
IRW / VRW    150-250
HHH / OCLP    250-400
LPS                  400-550
STC❤E             550-700
TECA            1200-1300
TECB            1300-1400
TECC            1500-1600

The Estate Name:

Vale Royal was a distillery located in Trelawny Parish, just like Longpond, and has a history covered in great depth by BAT, here. The long and the short of it is that it was founded in 1776 under the name of “Walky Walk” (poetic,yes?) before being retitled Vale Royal in the early 1800s. The estate managed to survive after the abolition of slavery, but a combination of falling sugar prices and a movement of consolidation led to the sale of the estate to Longpond in 1959, with the marque of VRW remaining as a memento of its glory days when it stood for “Vale Royal Wedderburn” – though as noted above, this edition, produced at Longpond’s facilities, should rightly be called a Plummer under Standard Notation, since it has 150 g/hlpa, not the required 200-300, but evidently decided to go with its own system.

Note: National Rums of Jamaica is not an estate or a distillery in and of itself, but is an umbrella company owned by three organizations: the Jamaican Government, Maison Ferrand of France (who got their stake in 2017 when they bought WIRD in Barbados, the original holder of the share Ferrand now hold) and Guyana’s DDL.

Ping No. 9 Longpond 1977 36 Year Old Jamaican Rum – Review

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May 102018
 

(c) liquor-store-europe.com

#510

The Ping No. 9 is a private / independent bottling done by the Danish liquor store Juuls and I first came across it in 2016 when one of those anonymous mad vikings (thanks Gregers!) brought it to a truly epic Caner Afterparty session, where it was promptly run past (what else?) the G&M Longpond 1941 and the BBR 1977 itself, to which we then added an Albrecht Trewlawny 1993 17 YO (Longpond, 2nd Release) and the EKTE No 2 (Monymusk) to cross reference .  We had nothing else on hand that was the right age or from the right island, so this had to do, but even that comparison allowed us to come to grips with its structure and assembly in a way that made its strengths (and weaknesses, such as they were) somewhat clearer.

Let that pass for the moment and simply sigh with envy at whoever sprang over a thousand euros in early 2018 (on one of the FB sales pages) for a bottle of this juice – not because it’s superlative (I didn’t think it was, not entirely), but simply because we don’t see rums from the 1970s coming on the market any longer and even the 1980s are fast becoming a vanishing breed, and so to try one that geriatric, and issued at a snorting 61%? Rum heaven.

All right, so a bourbon-cask aged expression, costing four figures, continental ageing, Danish bottler buying from a Speyside outfit, 221-bottle outturn. What did it taste like? In a word, lovely. It was smooth to smell and a pleasure to inhale, largely because the huge strength was under control the whole time, presenting heat instead of crude sharpness.  It began quietly with bananas, vanilla, mead, honey, cream cheese and a little caramel, almost no citrus (and if there was any, it kept way the hell back). As we came back to it over a period of some hours, crisper notes of green apples, candied oranges, cinnamon and ginger cookies came forward as the softer ones receded.

Say what you will about tropical ageing, there’s nothing wrong with a good long continental slumber when we get stuff like this out the other end. Again it presented as remarkably soft for the strength, allowing tastes of fruits, light licorice, vanilla, cherries, plums, and peaches to segue firmly across the tongue.  Some sea salt, caramel, dates, plums, smoke and leather and a light dusting of cinnamon and florals provided additional complexity, and over all, it was really quite a good rum, closing the circle with a lovely long finish redolent of a fruit basket, port-infused cigarillos, flowers and a few extra spices.

What is both good and to some extent a let-down about the rum is its control. At no point did any of us ever feel that we were getting a 61% beefcake in our glasses.  It was not a cream puff milquetoast, no, but in comparison to the gleefully manic proctological probing that clairins subject us to, this thing is like a lover’s gentle yet firm caress – and on the level described, it’s all good, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it also, I have to concede, lacked a real edge and bite of the sort a more funky profile would have provided, which leads me to my main point of contention.

There was little that was distinctly Jamaican in the rum – no, really – and it actually reminded me more of a combo of a Bajan and a Guyanese, taken to cask strength. If the measure of a rum is the extent to which its maker conforms to the standards of the place of origin or alignment with the expected style, then you’d be hard put to really place it as being from the island. The Ping No. 9 presents a profile somewhat at odds with those characteristic tastes we associate with the newer Jamaican bottlings of late – dunder, funk, hogo, esters, pick your term – little of this was in evidence.  Whether this is a matter of how and where it was aged, or the simple fact that it was made in a different era, is debatable. But it did make me feel somewhat disappointed.

I know there’s one person who’s reading this who’s muttering “Bullsquirt!” to himself and running to get his two bottles out of the triple-locked safe where he has them stashed behind a couple of flash-bangs and a collection of nasty toys meant to cause any would-be pilferer immense discomfort (he takes his juice seriously, and they’ll get his rums when they pry them out of his quivering hands, I suspect). He’s going to re-test it, no question, then post a rebuttal for me to ponder. The thing is, I know he liked the Ping 9 more so than I did, just as he disdained the Velier 1972 Courcelles and I didn’t.  And because our tastes and palates run apart from each other, it’s very likely that others will too. Therefore, interesting as I believe the Ping 9 to be, lovers and potential purchasers might want to sample before they buy. It’s very good but it’s also different…and that makes it something of a tricky purchase, no matter what the score, the age or the price.

(86/100)

Other notes

  • The rum is actually five days under 36 years old: for once I think I’ll just note it and move on and keep calling it a 36 YO. Such a tiny variation doesn’t trouble me much at such an age.
  • For what it’s worth, it makes me suspect that the BBR 1977 also came from Longpond.  My own opinion was that the BBR was better, and the Albrecht Trelawny and the EKTE also exceeded it.
  • Both Roger Caroni (who writes in French), and Wes Burgin over at the FatRumPirate tried a brother of this rum, the Old Jamaique Long Pond 1977 35YO (at 50%), which was a collaboration between the Belgian bottler Corman-Collins and the Scots bottler Ian MacLeod, the latter of whom was also the source of this barrel for Juuls. Roger liked it a lot (without a score), and Wes also commented on the lack of funkiness; still, from his 4.5-star score, I think it’s safe to say he liked the rum from his barrel a bit more than I did the rum from mine.
  • So what’s with the name “Ping”? I asked around and was told that “Ping” was the humourous nickname given to Michael Madsen (the owner of Juuls, the 30th anniversary of which this edition commemorates) in his youth….because he looked something like a penguin, or “pingvin” in Danish.  That’s so funny it almost has to be true, though I must emphasize it’s just something of a Danish urban rum-legend.

Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2003 (Long Pond) 12 YO Rum – Review

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Jan 162018
 

#479

We’re on something of a Jamaican rum kick for a week or two, because leaving aside Barbados, they’re the ones getting all the press, what with Worthy Park and Hampden now putting out the juice, Long Pond getting back in on the act, Monymusk and New Yarmouth lurking behind the scenes, and remember JB Charley with its interesting hooch? And of course behind them all, Appleton / J. Wray remains the mastodon of the island whose market share everyone wants a bite of.

While Worthy Park’s three new 2017 pot still offerings are definitely worth a buy, and Hampden is putting some big footprints into the sands of the beach, I still have a thing for Long Pond myself – this comes directly from that famous and oh-so-tasty G&M 1941 58 year old I value so highly and share around so much.  Alas, the only place one is going to get a Long Pond rum these days (until they reopen for business, for which many are waiting with bated and boozy breath) is from the independents, and Compagnie des Indes was there to satisfy the need: so far I think they have about twenty Jamaicans in the stable, of which three or four are from Long Pond and I think they’re all sourced from Scheer or the Main Rum Company in Europe. (Note: The best online background and historical data on Long Pond currently extant is on the site of that rabid Jamaican-loving rum-chum, the Cocktail Wonk, here and here).

Moving on to tasting notes, I have to say that when the bottle was cracked and I took a hefty snootful of the pale yellow rum, I was amazed at the similarity to (and divergence from) the G&M 1941 that was over four times older – there was that same wax and turpentine opening salvo which was augmented by phenols, rubber and some vague, musky Indian spices.  Honey and brine, olives, a few sharp red peppers (gone quickly), and a generous serving of the famous funk, crisp fruits and light flowers. It was well assembled, just a shade vague, as if not entirely sure what it wanted to be.

Never mind.  The palate was where the action was. Although the bottling at 44% ABV was not entirely enough to bring out all the subtleties, there was more than enough to keep the glass filled several times as I leaned back and took my time sampling it over an hour or so.  It began soft and warm with bananas, honey, whipped cream, a little salt caramel, and a little rye bread, aromatic wood chips (I hesitate to say cedar, but it was close).  Then the ester brass band came marching on through, providing the counterpoint – citrus, tart apples, cider, green grapes, and was that a flirt of cumin and curry I sensed? It came together in a nice tantara of a long, warm and spicy finish that wasn’t particularly original, just tried to sum up the experience by re-presenting the main themes – light fruity notes, some salt, olives and caramel, and a final leaf-blade of lemon peel holding it all together.

Long Pond is known for its high ester count of its rums and that over-the-top funky flavour profile, so what I tasted, tamed as it was by the relatively unassertive proof point, came as no surprise and was a pleasant reminder of how very well properly-made, lovingly-aged Jamaican rums can be. This standard proof rum was issued for the general market with 384 bottles and as far as I know there’s no cask strength or “Danish market” edition floating around.  But that’s not really a problem, since that makes it something everyone can appreciate, not just the A-types who cut cask strength rums with cask strength whisky.  Whatever you preference in these matters, the CdI Long Pond 12 remains a tasty, low key Jamaican that isn’t trying to rip your face off and pour fire down you throat, just present the estery, funky Jamaican rum in its best light…which this it does with delicacy, finesse, and no problems at all.  It’s a really good twelve year old rum.

(85/100)

Other notes

 

Rum Nation 1986 30 Year Old Blended Jamaican Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Nov 272017
 

#462

For almost two decades, Rum Nation issued very special 20+ year old Jamaican Rums in the Supreme Lord series, always at a relatively quaffable 40-45% and with that oh-so-cool retro wooden box and jute packing that has now been discontinued; then a year or two back they decided to go with a new line, the “Small Batch Rare Rums” – this was to differentiate the cask strength line of more limited bottlings from the blended products with larger outturns, which Fabio sometimes refers to as “entry level” and which I always thought were quite good (ever since I bought the entire 2010 line at once).

One of the best of these is this appealing, approachable and near-sublime Jamaican rum, blended from three special years of Long Pond’s stocks: 1985, 1986 and 1977. This is a rum issued in a limited outturn of 800 bottles, and has a presentation that places it at the top of the already fairly exclusive Rares: because while many of those are in the 10-20 year age range (there is a massive bronto of the 1992-2016 Hampden 61.6% that clocks in at 24, which I need to get real bad), this one beats them all and is at least 30 years old…and given a special presentation to match with a stylish flagon and clear printing direct on the bottle, and a neat box in which to show it off to less fortunate rum chums.

The constituent rums were aged in second fill bourbon barrels before being blended and then aged for a further six years in Oloroso casks pre-used for (an unnamed) whisky, and everything about the profile shows the best parts of all that ageing.  The nose was quite simply delicious – it dialled back the rubber and wax and furniture polish (though there was some of that) and amped up the characteristic Jamaican funk, mixing it up with bags of dark fruit – raisins, prunes, black olives for the most part.  Letting it stand gave more, much more: leather, tobacco, a smidgen of vanilla, honey, licorice, sherry, brown sugar and more raisins in a smooth smorgasbord of great olfactory construction. I walked around with that glass for over an hour and it was as rich at the end as it was in the beginning, and yes, that’s an unqualified recommendation.

Although I might have preferred a stronger, more forceful attack which 48.7% ABV did not entirely provide, there’s little I could find fault with once I actually tasted the thing.  Actually, it was as good as the nose promised and didn’t disappoint in the slightest: it began with a little unsweetened chocolate, caramel, molasses and funk, then added olives and brine to the pot, before flooring the accelerator and revving it up to the redline.  Tumeric and paprika, light grasses and herbs, flambeed bananas, lemon peel, more raisins and prunes, both smooth and a little savage at the same time – surely something to savour over a good cigar. And the finish was excellent, just long enough, a shade dry, presenting closing notes of oak, vanilla, leather, smoke, molasses and caramel, chocolate and the vaguest hint of fruitiness and citrus to end things off with aplomb and a flourish.

The Jamaica 30 is priced to match at around four hundred dollars and therefore I can’t in fairness suggest you put yourself in hock to go get it unless you have such coin burning a hole in your portfolio.  It lands emphatically in the Fifth Avenue segment of the market, which makes it, unfortunately, mostly affordable by those who are more into showing off, rather than rum-geeks who would put it to bed next to the wife and make sure it (and not the wife) is tucked in properly.

But if you can get it, it may even be worth the outlay: this was a really nice rum. In my more imaginative moments I like to think that some years ago Rum Nation took a look at their wares and concluded that perhaps they were, with long association and decades long sales, getting, well…maybe…a shade boring?  I can just see Fabio Rossi in his warehouse morosely sucking rum out of a barrel, wondering where to go next, then raising his fist to high heaven and swearing like Scarlett, that “Mah rums will nevah be boring again!”  It’s taken years for that metaphorical flight of fancy of mine to be fulfilled, and has he ever succeeded with the Small Batch series in general, and this one in particular.  This rum is as exciting as any new rum now being made; and if that doesn’t get your juices flowing, I honestly don’t know what will. Except maybe a second bottle.

(90/100)

Other notes

I am unaware of any added sugar or dosing on the rum. Fabio Rossi has told me in the past that the Rares are unmessed-with, but I have not managed to ask about this one in particular yet.  A query to him is pending. Marcus Stock, a friend of mine from Germany, took a small sample of his own and it measured at equivalent ABV of 45.18% which he calculated back to 12 g/L additives.  He promised to do the test on a larger sample as a double check.

Gordon & MacPhail Long Pond 1941 Jamaican Rum

 No Responses »
Jun 032017
 

Rumaniacs Review #048 | 0448

For this writer, the Long Pond 1941 remains, after maybe ten separate tastings (including a Rumaniacs sample), three purchased bottles and numerous sharings, one the most spectacular Jamaican rums ever made and not simply because of the titanic age — 58 years old (beat that if you can, Appleton).  It takes the passage of years, and many other Jamaican rums to be tried alongside, for the rum to snap properly into focus and be seen for its true quality.  And unlike the earlier Velier rums which sometimes sell for €4000-5000 a bottle, if they can even be found, the 1941 remains puzzlingly available and relatively affordable at around the thousand Euro mark.  You might have to search around a bit, but it can be found.  It’s a monument to G&M and Jamaica, the old ways and the old days, when making aged rum was not glamorous, but the same careful, patient quality was used to make them, because they deserved it.

Colour – Gold

Strength – 50%

Nose – Strong, deep, warm and not over-oaked.  All my tasting notes on this thing refer to the sweet aromas freshly-sawn cedar planks, and to that is added rubber, phenols, some Indian spices (tumeric, cumin and massala for the most part)…and that was just the beginning.  After ten minutes or so, mint, grass, some caramel, nail polish, olives, bananas, and plums and dates.  The sweet and salt elements are amazingly well balanced and overall, just a great nose.

Palate – The 50% is perfect.  Less and it would have dissolved into a cupcake, more and some of the subtleties might have been lost.  It’s warm and solid, quite velvety on the tongue. Cedar again, burnt sugar, hay and the dusty notes of a dry barn.   Burnt sugar, prunes, raisins, and also some greener, fresher components, of apples, more bananas (starting to spoil), pears, and some citrus all coming together in a superlative assembly.

Finish – Grapes, cedar, cumin, and some citrus zest wrestle for dominance in a very bright, long finish that does not disappoint. A fitting finish to a lovely rum.

Thoughts – Young and old, sweet and salt, sugar and spice, all delicately balanced against each other…you know it’s Jamaican, just not what kind. I don’t think any rum could possibly be aged that long in the Caribbean and survive. Velier remains wedded to the principle of tropical ageing, and is at one end of the spectrum; Compagnie des Indes is at the other end, specifically going in for slower maturation of the cooler climes of Europe – they believe the slower, more gradual interaction of wood and spirit allows subtler flavours to develop than that given by the brutally fast tropical regimen.  G&M may be the ultimate practitioner of the European ageing route (alongside Silver Seal, which also put out a 1941 rum, and from the same batch) and issued this rum as perhaps the definitive statement in support of that ideal.  Given its quality – dare I say magnificence? – I can’t say they’re wrong.  To paraphrase my original review, G&M did something stunning here – they went right ahead, aged a Jamaican from the war years beyond all reason…and issued this amazing rum, a rum right off the scale, after dreaming mad dreams of greatness.

(92/100)

Other reviews of the rum are available on the Rumaniacs page, here.

Rum Nation Jamaica 1986 Supreme Lord VI 26 Year Old (Long Pond) – Review

 5 Responses »
Jul 152014
 

D3S_8380

 

Rich sipping rum of remarkable complexity and flavour, one of the best I’ve ever had out of Jamaica.

Rum Nation’s Supreme Lord VI (the Jamaican 26 year old 2012 edition by any other name) is as good as its 2010 brother, if not actually surpassing it. It shows what can be done with an aged rum if time and care and patience – and some artistry – is brought to bear.  I loved the Supreme Lord V, which I reviewed a while back – and I must say, the VI does dial it up a few notches.  (Full disclosure – Fabio Rossi, the man behind Rum Nation, was having so many troubles working out the complications of me buying a single bottle from him, that he finally just lost patience, sent me the one, and said it was on the house.  So this one was a freebie, which happens rarely enough these days, but a fact of which you as a reader should be aware).

Like its predecessor, this rum was dark red-amber in hue, and gave evidence of good viscosity, what with its chubby legs slowly draining back into the glass.  It was also richly pungent to a fault: when I opened that bottle and decanted into my glass the aromas were all over the room in no time: a fragrant nuttiness with a faint tawny, perhaps herbal tinge, and cloves and nutmeg, a little pepper, vanilla, cherries.  I noted in my review of the 2011 edition that there was that slight turpentine, plastic tinge to it – none of that was in evidence here.  This rum has esters flexing their biceps all over the place.

The feel and taste on the palate was similarly excellent.  There was a sense of fruit teetering on the edge of over-ripeness, without actually falling over.  Leather, and the dry mustiness of a closed stable full of tack.  Aromatic tobaccos mixed it up with (I kid you not) a freshly opened packet of loose black tea. Even at 45%, it was smooth and easy, with a peaches and cream texture on the tongue that quite subdued the normally sharp citrus tinge Jamaican rums have.  And after adding a smidgen of water and waiting a while, there was even a tease of unsweetened dark chocolate and molasses winding its way through there – I just loved this rum, honestly.

And like the nose and the arrival, the exit was warm, a little aggressive, not too long, not too sharp and quite satisfying – one might even say it was chirpily easy-going, sauntering out the door with the casual insouciance of a person who knows he doesn’t have to tout his ability.  That last twitch of molasses, orange zest and nutmeg was just heavenly.  The Supreme Lord VI was quite a step up the evolutionary ladder from the last one I tried, I think (though I still love that one as well, don’t get me wrong – it had an aggro I found pleasing, in its own way).  All in all, this may have been one of the best Jamaican rums I’ve ever tried, and speaks volumes about why I’m a fanboy of Rum Nation.

When asked, Fabio noted to me that he produced 760 bottles of this nectar.  It was distilled in a pot still out of Long Pond (home of the rampaging rhino that is the SMWS 81.3%) back in 1986, aged in ex-bourbon American oak barrels, but also finished for another eight years in Oloroso sherry butts – that would be where the amazing panoply of flavours got a helping hand, I’d say.  Rums like this one explain something of why I am prepared pay the extra coin for small batch creations – it’s a bit hit and miss, I concede…but not here.

Occasionally I go on a real multi-hour bender (usually out of boredom) – these days somewhat more rarely, of course. Still, with most rums I polished off a standard bottle in a few hours…this one is so smooth, so tasty, so complex — so good — that the experience (were I ever to perpetrate such a discourtesy with such a gem) would take half the night, yet feel like it’s over in five minutes.  There are some words I always hesitate to use in a review because it sounds so much like mindless genuflection or commercial shilling, but here I have to be honest and say, from the heart, that I think this rum is exquisite.

(#182. 90/100)

**

Gordon & MacPhail Long Pond 1941 58 Year Old Rum – Review

 3 Responses »
Nov 042012
 

 

Hardcore to the max. This thing eats bats out of hell for lunch. What a great, majestic rum.

“The past is never dead” wrote William Faulkner. “It’s not even past.” Perhaps no rum I’ve ever tried proves that point more than this one. Gordon & MacPhail’s 58 yr old Long Pond 1941 is an insane, extravagant orgy of self-indulgence, a freewheeling base-jump from the preponderance of hollow rums that sell by the truckload and whose names everyone knows, to the uncharted realms of uber-expensive spirits which serve no sane purpose. Surely this thousand dollar hooch is one of the wildest products a distillery has ever spoiled itself with – for, who would buy such a thing? And having bought it, who would dare drink it? But I tell you this: G&M have made a rum you might want to try (if you can) just because it exists – until Appleton issues its 75 year old in 2037 (or the 100 in 2062), I seriously doubt that there will ever be another like it.

Consider: in 1941 the world was at war; television was still a technogeek pastime for people with post-doctoral degrees, and radio was king; in spite of the decline of the British Empire, the sun still didn’t set on it; the transistor had not yet been invented and computing power 1/100th the magnitude of today’s iphone fit into several big rooms. Suburbs, discount stores, desegregation, the pill, franchise fast foods – all these had not yet touched the populace. While this barrel slumbered (the rum was taken to the UK in 1946 and then to Elgin where G&M is headquartered, to further age in 1967), the world around it changed – you can truly say, when you sip this, that you are going back in time.

Nosing this golden Rip van Winkle of a rum was, I admit, a fairly kinetic event. At 50% ABV, would you expect anything else? Strong, deep aromas threw me to the ground and assaulted my senses with rich scents of rubber and wood, some kind of Indian spice (samosas? cumin? maybe some turmeric?) and light citrus, minty, grassy notes (I like to believe this is the sugar cane itself, except I know it don’t smell like dat) and a last bash of cedar. All in balance, all strong and absolutely smashing. This was a surprisingly decent nose for something I had feared would be nothing but oak, and when I tried it I was reminded once again of why stronger expressions are fast becoming my preference.

As for the taste, well, it was not the dark and heavy billy-club to the face I was expecting either: a massive arrival, strong and intense, spicy and nicely heated without being obnoxious about it, those cedar notes became more pronounced and acted as the core around which swirled a grassy-like hay flavour, burnt sugar, dried fruits, bananas, prunes and raisins. It exited at last with a long-lasting, dry, smoky-leather flourish, retaining herbal notes of crushed sugar cane juice, and leaving behind a memory of glistening green lawns and wet earth after a warm summer rain. Taste flowed smoothly into fade in a way one cannot help but be impressed by, honestly.

These words are the bare bones – the rum is exceptionally good for its age, and while of course paying four figures for it is kinda insane by itself, I can’t say that it wasn’t a deep, flavourful product, a beefcake of heat and hi-test which could wake up a dead stick. It’s just not made like most other rums, y’know, with colouring, deep brown sugar notes and a “rum” profile (no additives in this baby). In fine, this is a product made without compromise, without affectation, without any attempt to please. It stands proud and defiant, secure in its Olympian awesomeness as perhaps the oldest commercially produced rum, ever. It sneers at El Dorado’s 25, eats Rum Nation’s superb-but-gentle offerings for lunch, smiles pityingly at the Courcelle 37 year old, and casts a merely disdainful eye at the Appleton 50.

Long Pond as a distillery still exists in Jamaica, after many changes in ownership; they make the 20 and 25 year old rums to this day (alas, unfound and therefore untried by me), and have shipped much stock to the UK over the decades, hence the independent bottlers’ consistent issuing of new variations with their name. The SMWS 9 year old 81.3%, is a good example of the cheerful manner in which startlingly original variations of its products are made, and all I can say is thank you, because it shows the levels to which rums can seriously aspire, at any age.

Still, at end, there is absolutely no reason for the rum to exist. It is certainly not worth the price I paid for it – if one were to judge on nose and taste alone (although for its geriatricity, it’s right at the cliff edge). But what a rum I did get: a huge, snarling, elderly, cask strength monster from out of the past, with a taste profile that shames today’s timid and vacillating producers whose only criteria is how many cases they can move in a year, how best they can smoothen out bite, calm down unadventurous boozers and soothe unpracticed palates.

“Buy me, buy me…I won’t hurt you,” they cajole and coo to the masses, but G&M ignored ‘em all and went their own way…took a cask aged beyond all reason, waved their magic wands, blessed the barrel with the tears of virgins and the incantations of druids… and issued this one of a kind bottling. In doing so, they reminded us all that we can still produce something utterly off the scale if we just have some courage and are willing to act, after dreaming mad dreams of greatness.

(#130. 91/100)

 

SMWS R5.1 Longpond 2002 9 Year Old Rum “Mint Humbugs” – Review

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Sep 082012
 

 

The most searingly powerful rum you are ever likely to try. Do not simultaneously bloviate and drink this, or spontaneous combustion may occur.

(#119. 81/100) [Video Review]

Don’t be frightened. A rum like the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s R5.1 Longpond 9 year old, bottled at a grinningly ferocious cask-strength 81.3%, isn’t really out there to kill you: it just feels that way.  I used to laugh at the way Bacardi 151 and Appleton 151 made wussie forty percenters run a hot chocolate delivery into their pants…well, here’s one that takes it a step further and indulges itself in a level of industrial overkill and outright belligerence one can only admire. It’s a Longpond, it’s cask strength, its over 160 proof of tail-whuppin’ badass.  Tread warily, because it smells your fear.

For rummies out there who, like me on occasion, are not so much into whisky lore and tend to flip an insouciant bird at the maltsters (for my whisky loving friends reading this, it’s the other guys, not you), it should be noted that the SMWS has a stated philosophy of taking what is in the barrel out of the barrel, and bottling it as is.  Bam.  Take that. No muckin’ about, no weak-kneed nonsense like “drinking strength” or “dilution with distilled water” – what you had been ageing is what you get (you can just see the boys at the Society politley ignoring the rums of Cadenhead and Renegade).  As for the R5.1, much as you might think this is an amped-up Audi supercar, it just means it derives from the first barrel of rum bought, and the 5th distillery from which they have bought it, in this case, Longpond out of Jamaica.

The corked green bottle was marked with the SMWS logo, details of origin, and tasting notes (clicking on the photo above will enlarge it so you can read, if you wish), but since I don’t read others’ tasting notes until I’ve made my own, I just went straight ahead and decanted a hay-blonde spirit into the glass.  And here I must warn you that while it smelled fantastically original, you simply could not ignore 162.6 proof – that’s not far away from pure alcohol and the aroma is therefore, a shade nuts.  Medicine, grass and freshly turned sod, with strong briny and iodine overtones, yet not so much as to make me suggest peat, more like a weird plasticine some crazy kid wants to play with (note to my friends – I refer to others’ children, not yours).

The arrival was strongly heated, as if Satan’s brimstone-flavoured pitchfork was smoothly stroking my palate.  Yet there was a trace of honey and chocolate mints there also, among the medicine and the grass, and while the turpentine evident in the taste suggested a failed artist had breathed on this baby, I have to acknowledge its overall complexity, even if it wasn’t really to my taste – I’ve continually whinged about rum moving above 40%, but 81.3% is simply too much. Maybe regular cask-strength whisky drinkers would drool over this powerful drink more than I would.  It does make a cocktail that is simply incredible, mind you.

And I must say this — the finish is, quite simply, awesome: it goes on and on and on like a pornstar on a performance bonus…I’ve never had anything remotely like it.  Five minutes after my first swallow, the fumes were still meandering up my throat in what may be the longest finish I’ve ever had, even if it does remind me somewhat of iodine flavoured camphor balls. And then, just when other rums (Lemon Hart 151, Stroh 80 or Bacardi 151) run out of steam, the R5.1 burns hotter, pushes harder, gives more. This experience quickly exhausted my curses in six languages and I was reduced to weakly muttered childish wows and holy cows. Trust me, after several glasses of this monster, your eyes wobble and your sphincter seizes up, and still the rum keeps on coming.

So: the taste is biblical, the arrival is extraordinary, and the finish so strong that if it was more it would be practically nuclear and be banned by all free nations: it’s a tonsil tearing, all-out assault on your sanity. This rum should be issued with not only health advisories, but camo-green (oh wait…).  It may not be the best rum you’ve ever had (though it’s probably the strongest you’ll ever try), but you can believe me when I tell you it’s absolutely among the most original.

“If in your travels you see God,” says a modest Hattori Hanzo, the ultimate sword-maker in “Kill Bill,” when the Bride was selecting a katana, “God will be cut.”  I like this kind of becoming humility in a craftsman.  It’s a kind of reverse arrogance, acknowledging a self-evident mastery so overwhelming, so off the scale, so beyond mere hyperboles like “fantastic” or “zoweee” that there’s actually no need  to mention it at all — the product speaks for itself.

The makers of R5.1 Longpond 9 year old fall into this group of such self-deprecating uber-senseis.  It’s not that they have made a rum excellent enough that God will smile, help himself to a second roti and curry goat and pour you both another shot, no (although this is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility) – it’s more like they created a concoction so incredibly powerful, so fearsomely, mind-numbingly strong (and good, let’s not forget) that if, in your travels, you did meet God in a beer garden down by de backdam, then trust me…God would get drunk.

Other notes

Yes, there are rums stronger than this one: the 84.5% Sunset Very Strong out of St. Vincent for one. I tasted that one in late 2015 and it’s not half bad…as long as one exercises all the usual cautions. Oh and there’s the Marienburg 90% from Suriname, which is stronger in proof but weaker in quality than both. In 2020 I finally listed the 21 strongest rums in the world in an article of their own,

Rum Nation Jamaica 1985 Supreme Lord V 25 YO Rum (Long Pond)- Review

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Mar 172012
 

An Italian outfit takes on the big boys from Scotland in grand style with a 25 year old of stunning originality and quality.

The Rum Nation Specially Selected Jamaica 1985 25 year old (also known as the Supreme Lord V) is a limited bottling rum that is a big vaffanculo to the commercial establishment and hoi polloi of drinkers. No Model T of rums, not meant for the masses of drinkers and cocktail mixers, it’s a rapier, not a club. This rum was meant for people who really like ‘em, and especially appreciate rums that are rare, unique and as different from the standards as, oh, 2011’s “The Artist” is from 1927’s “Wings”. When Rum Nation said this is a single domain rum, they were serious, and they didn’t give a damn if the rest of the West didn’t get it (not surprisingly, they’re almost unknown here).

Everything about the presentation of this $165 (2012 price) rum from Long Pond distillery had that old fashioned genteel-ness about it. It was packed in a stenciled wooden box with a sliding panel; the box itself was lined with jute sacking. The bottle was cork tipped and unpretentious, and sported a Jamaican stamp from empire days on the label (the Demerara 23 has a similar motif). If you’re sniffing and asking “so what?” well, consider that the St Nicholas Abbey 12 year old is half the age, and a quarter again the price, and while absolutely excellent itself, is nowhere near as unique (though the etching is admittedly prettier).

You think I jest when I say “unique”? Consider the nose. Tire rubber as thick as a black strip laid down at the Boulevard in Georgetown by a rich kid’s Mercedes braking too fast assaulted me right away. Plasticine coiled right behind it. What the hell? And yet that faded, replaced by the damp smells of wet autumn leaves. Rich earth and a nip to it that recalled memories of my younger professional days when I rested up in Europe and went for long walks on cobbled, windswept streets in old cities. And then that was replaced by fleshy fruits and heavier floral hints (apples and green grapes), all mixed up with a hint of tobacco.

On the palate, things got a lot better…. caramel and lighter fruits (apples and green grapes), merging with rich, aromatic pipe tobacco and more leather than you’d find on a well-outfitted Bentley. Not overpoweringly sweet. No citrus notes of the sort Appleton has taught us to expect in Jamaican products, though perhaps a little oaky (not enough to dissuade me from having more, mind you). And smooth, very smooth – that inauspicious start merged into a really lovely sipping rum – top class all the way, no matter how odd it sometimes became. And the fade was smooth and long lasting, with a background of burnt sugar, nuts and cherries and even here, a bite of that crazy rubbery note that seemed to want to stay there just to piss me off a little. My personal take was that whisky drinkers are gonna love it.

A comprehensive take on Rum Nation will wait until I have both more details and all the reviews of their products up on the site. In brief, this Italian outfit has brought out a stable of current releases that I found so intriguing that not only did I buy the entire 2010 line in one go, but in my estimation they should be thought of in the same breath as the better known Cadenhead, Gordon & MacPhail, AD Rattray and Bruichladdich. They take stocks from various Caribbean island nations (this pot/column still rum was sourced fifteen years ago) and then mature them for however long they feel like in ex-bourbon casks, with a finishing in ex-sherry casks, and then they bottle it without adding anything further…well, no wonder they taste so distinctive.

Now, I’m not going to tell you flat out that you’ll like this rum. It certainly will have rubbery notes and feinty tastes to it which many will despise with all the hot-eyed zealotry (and lust) of a Roman eyeing a vestal virgin. I was hoping I’d never have to write these words, but for sure this is an acquired taste for you as an individual – I don’t think I myself could have given it a fair shake as recently as a year ago. All I can say as a reviewer is that I thought it as crazy and offbeat as a modern-day Jeff Spicoli; smooth and strong and well put together, and maybe a little stoned — and if Rum Nation has not, perhaps, made a Model T like the Bacardi Black, or a souped up Bentley like the English Harbour 25, then believe me when I tell you that they have made a beautifully jazzed-up Aston Martin DB9 with as much leather as Judas Priest and more rubber than Janet Jameson’s boudoir…and maybe just forgot to fumigate a little.

(#103. 88/100)

Other Notes